


too late for antique vows

by betony



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:08:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone’s wedding gift is a small box, crafted from ebony dark as night and carved round with poppies; the same box, incidentally, that was very nearly the bride's doom not hours before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	too late for antique vows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ars_belli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ars_belli/gifts).



> For ars_belli, who wanted something after the marriage, and explaining what happened to Persephone's box of sleep. Also, [this detail from an Imperial Roman mosaic](http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z31.1.html) was the other main inspiration for this work.  
> Title from John Keats' "Ode to Psyche."

Hera's wedding gift is an admonition to the bride to be a good wife; to support her husband in all he did, to listen and obey to all he said, to never doubt or defy him. Psyche, who received a lecture along similar lines from her mother the night before her family left her on a mountaintop, nods reverentially. 

Apollo's wedding gift is a foretelling: that the child of Eros and Psyche shall be a healthy girl, unharmed from her mother's hardships and sharing in her immortality, and to that his sister adds her promise that she will oversee Psyche's labor herself. Psyche presses a hand over her slight curve of her stomach, and laughs with relief. 

Persephone’s wedding gift is a small box, crafted from ebony dark as night and carved round with poppies; the same box, incidentally, that was very nearly the doom of the bride not hours before. She smiles and places it into Psyche’s shaking hands and murmurs: “I thought this might still be of use to you.” 

Psyche manages a thank-you and places the box alongside the string of flawless pearls that Poseidon offered, the baskets of fresh sweet fruits Demeter presented, the very golden cup from which Psyche choked down her first fiery mouthful of divine nectar, and if anyone notices that she doesn’t touch it again, even the gods choose not to pass comment. 

Later, in the relative tranquility once their guests have gone, Eros explains: “Sleep is a precious thing for us, you know. But Hypnos lives on the border of Hades, and he owes Persephone his fealty. She meant it kindly.” 

Psyche frowns. “But there are stories of even the great gods at slumber: Father Zeus, Apollo, your parents themselves. I know I’ve heard them.” It occurs to her, quite suddenly, that these are no longer just the shadowy figures of bedtime tales; instead, they are her in-laws and her equals and her only companions in eternity. The thought makes her chest tighten with panic. 

Eros, nevertheless, doesn’t seem to have noticed her distress. “I didn’t say _impossible_ , only—rare. Time flows differently for us. We’ll go centuries without a wink of sleep, as much as we crave it; and slumber every other night for others. Some human ages go by in the blink of an eye, and others drag on past all endurance.” 

Psyche considers this. “My nurse did say the wedding night of Zeus Thunderer and Lady Hera lasted three hundred years,” she offers. “Perhaps it’s something like that?” 

Eros laughs, but in the way of the gods, his mind is already starting to leave the conversation behind, as easily as his mother had dropped her grudge against Psyche what must be—hours? days?—some time before. The gods' attention rarely lingers on any given subject, she's coming to find, for all they live so long. 

“Perhaps it is. But—“ His smile turns wicked “—on the subject of wedding nights….” 

Psyche obligingly bends forward to meet him in a kiss, but somewhere in her mind, she remembers the despair that had led her to open the box in the first place, the cold reason that had argued that any death that came from opening the forbidden box could not be worse than Aphrodite’s next task. 

She sets the box in the darkest corner she can find and swears she’ll not so much as think of it again. 

* * *

When Psyche was mortal still, and only the youngest of her father’s three beautiful daughters, she had had a tutor who’d complained to her mother the Queen: the only flaw in your children, Majesty, is that Pella must have her limbs occupied at all times, Philrya her tongue, and little Psyche her mind! 

So it was not surprising that after a while, after her daughter has grown old enough to walk and talk and amuse herself, she begins to ask her husband how his enchantments work, and what charms make his love-darts fly; and once those are answered, when she can accompany him when he goes about his work. Eros is patient, and has an answer for every question she can imagine; that is one of the things that made her fall in love with him even in the dark, even without his arrows. But this thing only he denies her—the chance to come with him. 

Oh, he manages it skillfully enough—distracting her with kisses and caresses, showing her the latest trick Hedone has mastered, taking off with his majestic snowy wings before she notices he’s left, never actually refusing her outright (just as he never had refused her anything before, except the chance to see him) but making his wishes clear nonetheless. 

She is no longer effectively trapped in the mansion behind the mountains. She has made her way home from it once before, and now she has immortality and a god’s strength and speed to help her on her way. But her days stretch ahead with nothing to do, and, just as Eros promised, sleep remains elusive. She had never before noticed how easily a doze, or a nap, made the hours fly by before she was bereft of them, and now all that's left to her, with all the world and all of time before her, is to roam the halls of her home listlessly. 

After a while, she can bear it no longer. 

“Take me with you,” she begs, and winces. It is an echo of her wails the night he left her behind, weeping, in the courtyard of their house: a heartbroken human princesses, leagues away, or so they had both thought, from any who might help or even know her. She thinks she might have forgiven him it after all this time. She wonders if he’s forgiven himself, or even felt the need to. She wonders if it matters. 

”Very well,” he says at last, face impassive. “Bring your box.” 

With a twinge of misgiving Psyche puts Hedone in the care of a neighboring wood-nymph and retrieves Persephone’s box from where she’d hidden it and tucks it under her arm as they take flight together. They fly what seems a very long time, over mountain and meadow and the wine-dark sea, until they hover over an island, the largest of its fellows in the ocean. 

“Naxos,” Eros says shortly in response to her questioning look, and Psyche catches her breath. Naxos, where Father Zeus himself had been raised! Never in a thousand years could she have thought that she might see such a sight. But nevertheless, it's quite respectable; she's in the company of her husband, after all. 

Eros swoops lower without warning, but Psyche won’t be left behind. Doggedly she follows him ( _follows, follows, always follows_ \--and why does the thought seem so bitter now?) until they drift, invisible now, above the spot on the beach where a tall young man and a sharp-faced girl sit side by side. 

Psyche recognizes the girl as a princess at once: it’s something about the bearing, the precision of her gestures, the certainty that every word she speaks should be heard and obeyed. It’s no one she knew, however, nor even a daughter or granddaughter. More time must have passed on earth than she calculated: everyone she might have cared to see once more is long passed down to Hades, where Psyche can never join them. 

The young man down below leans forward to steal a kiss from his royal companion, and Psyche focuses on watching them with a sense of relief. _He_ is certainly nothing so grand; or, if he is, doesn’t show any signs of having been raised to it. But regardless he’s taken with his young lover, and Psyche’s heart softens, watching them. For years, waiting lonely in her parents’ empty palace, she had dreamed of just such a charming romance for herself; even the fact that love, when it—or he—had finally found her, had come with far more trials and travails than she’d ever imagined, can’t dull her vicarious satisfaction at the sight. 

Beside her, Eros murmurs: “Theseus of Athens. With him, Princess Ariadne of Crete.” 

He jerks his chin towards the box Psyche still holds. 

“Open it,” he mouths, and Psyche does, fumbling the latch out of terror that the sleep barely contained inside will envelope her once more. Despite her worry, it doesn’t—not her, at least. 

From this perspective, it’s surprising, and a little unnerving, how quickly the youngsters below fall asleep. And their pallor, too—no wonder Eros thought her dead! For an instant she’s confused; is this what they’ve come for, to cast two innocents into the damned sleep for no offense? Surely that’s the responsibility of some other immortal. Her husband’s work is to bring light, love, and joy. 

But then Eros pulls out one of his arrows, and understanding comes sharp and sudden. It’s not one of the gold-tipped ones, but instead tripped a dull-gray lead point. With awful care he takes aim at the breast of the slumbering Theseus. When the arrow finds its mark, Psyche shudders as though it were her body pierced. 

With terrible efficiency, Eros kneels by the young man and wipes the sleep from his face. Theseus wakes within moments, blinks, and turns to look at his companion; his face, so ardent minutes before, now twists with disgust, and he gathers himself up and disappears up the beach. 

He’s out of sight before Psyche realizes it. 

She kneels beside the princess in turn, scooping the sleep from her eyes and into the box. If Psyche hurries, perhaps it won’t be too late; perhaps he won’t have gone far at all. Ariadne stirs, and turns, and her brow furrows with confusion before her face pales once more with horror. She doesn’t run after her lost lover. She’s too proud for that, prouder than Psyche had been in the same situation. Instead she sits exactly where she has always been, head raised high, from all indications expecting him to return to her, shamefaced and stammering. 

Psyche waits with her, unseen, until dawn, when it’s clear she’s been abandoned. Only then does the princess Ariadne sink her head into her hands and begin to weep. Psyche considers, briefly, shedding her invisibility and trying to offer words of comfort, but what would she say? What explaination could she provide, when her world is in such turmoil? 

Never, not even when she was at her most heart-sore, had she thought her husband's work could be so terrible, and she remembers, uneasily, that Apollo's oracle called him a monster, once. 

By the time she looks away, Eros is long gone. 

* * *

“It is the will of the gods,” her husband tells her when she confronts him. “Love is helpless before it. Theseus must return to Athens alone; his father Poseidon demands it.” 

“So,” Psyche snaps, “you’d leave her, friendless and alone, once Theseus has had what he wants from her.” 

“She has no place in his destiny.” 

“What else is she to do with herself? She has left all else behind, put her trust in him, and now she is lost.” 

Eros stares back coldly. “The loves of gods have survived the ends of love-affairs for centuries. I expect she’ll manage just as they have.” 

And that silences her, the reminder of how very differently her own story had gone. Why hadn’t she realized it? Why hadn’t she remembered the tales of Io, of Clytie, of Europa? It was only luck, after all that had kept her from sharing their fates. 

In the distance, Hedone—overseer of pleasure and acutely sensitive to any grief or anger around her—begins to wail. 

Psyche presses her lips together and reminds herself fiercely: She shouldn’t complain. She has no right to complain. She should be grateful. 

She isn't; instead, the thought of her close escape simply makes her angrier. She turns away. 

Still. When she thinks back to the expression on her husband’s face, he seems almost…ashamed. 

She can’t help but keep thinking of the Princess of Crete, stranded on Naxos, however. When she returns to the island, Ariadne has made her way to the sanctuary, but waits there, heavy-eyed and hopeless, with no dream or direction to drive her onwards. 

That might have been her, if she hadn’t opened Persephone’s box of slumber, she thinks, and slumber from that same box was the root of Ariadne’s current despair, by Eros’ hand with Psyche’s collusion. This is her doing, and her responsibility. 

It’s that more than anything that decides her, and instantly, Psyche sets out East to find Dionysus in his sanctuary. 

More easily than she would have ever thought possible, Psyche smiles and dimples and gently guides him into realizing that he would truly like to visit his father’s birthplace and pay his respects. By the time she’s left, he’s already collecting his followers and organizing their raucous progress to Naxos. 

It’s one of the better choices she can find. Dionysus always travels in groups, to prove more varied company for the lost princess, and there’s little better than wine to dull heartbreak. Far more important, though, is the fact that Dionysus himself was born of a mortal woman who came to sorrow through love; unlike the other Olympians, he might well understand something of human sorrow. Ariadne will have need of that. 

That’s not enough, though, and that night she prepares a grand banquet for her husband, has the servants play the songs she knows he loves best, and takes him to bed. Afterwards, she caresses his curly locks with one hand, and reaches for the ebony box with another; before he realizes what’s happened, she spreads a bit of sleep over his eyelids and leans back to study the results. 

It is strange: it seems Persephone’s sleep overcomes even the immortals. This, she can only conclude, is what Eros meant all that time ago when he explained to her that true sleep eluded the gods. After all this time of knowing, of sleeping beside him, of living as his holy wife, she’s never seen him sleeping so deeply before. 

Not even the night she raised up her lamp to look upon his face for the first time. 

The thought of him lying there on that terrible night, half-asleep, knowing that she would be unable to resist her curiosity and doing nothing to stop it, fills her with sudden rage, and without the slightest shred of guilt, she reaches for his abandoned bow and quiver and takes flight after bidding Hedone to watch over her slumbering father.

The rest is easy enough; Psyche might never have drawn a bow before, but she has a strong arm and enough observation of Eros to ensure two golden arrows strike Ariadne and Dionysus directly before the god’s parade would come upon the lost princess. The rest, Psyche concludes, is up to Ariadne’s own fate; with any luck, she’ll keep the god’s favor long enough to find a new desire for life, and go on to make her own way in the world. And a god will have the power to help her off the island and establish her as no mortal man might; anyway, she suspects Ariadne might have soured on mortal men, anyway. 

It’s not much--and far more pragmatic than the mortal Psyche could have imagined herself becoming--but it’s all she can offer. 

Ariadne will simply have to be content with that. 

* * *

Her husband is waiting for her when she returns, Hedone peeking out from behind him somewhat guiltily. Enchanted sleep, it seems, only lasts so long in the divine, and he only raises an eyebrow at her as she silently offers him his bow and arrows. 

”Did it go well?” is all he asks, as though he expected that she would take his weapons and go, as though he were proud of her, rather than angry or ashamed. 

She can’t seem to make sense of it: she defied him, tricked and disobeyed him, did everything a loyal mortal wife should not so much as dream of. Then it strikes her she’s not quite mortal any more. 

Psyche stares at her husband, considering. If he’d wanted a humble obedient wife, he should have kept her mortal. Instead he gave her immortality, the chance to wage her power against his and see who came out the stronger. In fact, if the smile now threatening to cross his handsome face is any indication, he rather longs for it—all well and good, but more importantly, she does, too. Eros can wreak whatever havoc he chooses in the lives of gods and men, and she, Psyche will follow behind (a choice now, rather than from a lack of anything better to do) and do what she can to give the victims a fair chance, by any means necessary. 

For the first time, she thinks of eternity and does not shudder. 

”Yes,” she tells him: a declaration of war, of renewed love. “It did.” 

* * *

It's not until Dionysus makes his mortal bride immortal that Psyche is able to seek her out. Either one or the other is not at Olympus, due either to the season or to Psyche's self-appointed tasks; but on that day Persephone comes again to stand by her mother's throne on Olympus, and Psyche seizes her chance to speak to her. 

Persephone's color is better now, and her hair loose as befits her mother's springtime daughter, but something about the way she holds herself makes it all too clear that this was the woman who made herself Queen of the Dead rather than hapless victim of an abduction. Psyche is no longer surprised about the nature of her wedding gift; in fact she suspects that Persephone might have guessed more accurately at how she'd feel as a new bride, uncertain of her place, than any other had. 

"Thank you," she says fervently, taking Persephone's hands in her own; despite all the time that has passed, doesn't need to explain why or for what; "it did--it _does_ come of use to me. More than I might have guessed." 

And Persephone laughs, Queen again for an instant rather than maiden. "Spare me and my lord any inconvenient arrows, wife of Eros, and consider your debt repaid."

"I promise," says Psyche, with the confidence of one who speaks for herself and not just her husband, and squeezes Persephone's hands as carelessly as she would those of her sisters. But even as she steps away, Ariadne's pale, frightened face catches her eye. Psyche herself must have looked much the same, years before.

She's come prepared, though; holding her gift for the new bride, Psyche approaches and says: "I thought this might be of use to you." 

Ariadne smiles.


End file.
